What kind of signs were you seeing and how did you differentiate from moose and deer?

It would be good if the elk are spreading that far but given how rarely they are sighted south east of the park in the Bancroft area where they were reintroduced, it would be a bit of a surprise if a herd has made it to the far north west corner of the park.

West end. Small, unnamed lake between Kawawaymog and North Tea. I've never seen so much poop concentrated in a such small area before!

Droppings were clearly a larger ungulate, so the question was moose vs elk vs deer, was hard to distinguish. Droppings were dark in colour, looked too big for deer, and too small for moose so that had us curious.

We looked for a good set of tracks and found what certainly appeared to be elk tracks in the ice. I say fairly certain, because I'm not a wildlife bio, but it matched up with my key. Hindsight, I should have snapped some pictures for further verification, but it never occurred to me at the time. More of a "that's a cool wild moment".

Keep an eye out if in the area. Would be curious to know if a herd is for sure moving about up there.

On a semi-related note, I had heard last year that the some of the road kill deer in the Bancroft Area were going to a trapper who I am told was trapping and dispatching wolves that were molesting the elk herd in that area.

I'm going to see if I can cross paths with the people who had told me this and find out if they know where this was occurring and if the elk are still known to be in that area or if they've moved on.

I've done some asking around and I've been told that there's no reason why there wouldn't be elk where @Stajanleafs reported seeing the droppings. Basically what I've been told is that the elk are mostly hanging out in a herd which is east of Bancroft. The rest are scattering and there has been reports of elk as far west as Dorset and as far south as Peterborough county (it wasn't clear where in Peterborough county though). There was a sighting of several elk in Whitney last year sometime as well. This is all just word of mouth, so take it for whatever it's worth.

In the late 1800’s the population of elk was destroyed by over-harvesting and destruction of their environment. In 1996, the Ontario government and partners announced their support, and creation of The Plan for the Restoration of Elk in Ontario. In January of 2000, the first of two herds of Elk from Elk Island National Park in Alberta were shipped to Bancroft, scheduled to be released back into the wild and re-populate the area. The second release was a year later in Jan 2001, when 50 more were released. Since that time, the once endangered elk’s population has grown and flourished. So much so, that the first elk hunt was allowed in September of 2011.

Nov. 1, 2012 · The nearest location to this area was in the Bancroft/North Hastings region. Elk were originally native to Ontario before they were wiped out by human settlement, agriculture and over-hunting. It is believed that elk became extinct in the province by the end of the 19th century.

Ontario's Elk Management Plan has been developed in the context of MNR's strategic direction in Our .... The following are the guiding principles for elk management, which are derived from the guiding principles for the ...

Apr. 16, 2015 · Nature Discovery Tour guide Barry Wannamaker has been involved with the Elk Restoration Project ... When the elk were finally approved to come to Bancroft after a series of costly and extensive studies ..

Last edited by JSC.Kipawa on August 25th, 2019, 8:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

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